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Story

Stories explain, captivate, disturb, and inspire. They can tell us there is something very, very wrong, and they can give us a vision for what we never thought possible. Great stories are about what’s true inside all of us. That’s what makes them work. Entrepreneurship is about telling a story that connects the deep needs of a group of people with a repeatable solution. For your deck, stories are the fabric that stitches everything together. You will use stories in three primary ways:

1. To create a narrative arc that ties your slide deck together.

2. To explain one or more of your slides.

3. To have as a reservoir of things to discuss and ways to respond to questions during a conversation.

Whether you’re presenting in person or sending the deck for someone to read, without the elements of story, your deck is just a bunch of boring slides.

In this section, we outline four basic story archetypes and use the case study of Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of charity: water, to illustrate their power. In the last decade, charity: water has revolutionized the nonprofit industry, put a significant dent in the global water crisis, and set the standard for raising money in the twenty-first century for any venture. Its efforts have funded more than 16,000 water projects and brought clean water to 5.2 million people in 25 countries. It has also raised over $185 million from 1 million supporters.

As a nonprofit, charity: water’s engine works a bit differently than a typical startup, but the basic stories it uses to sell others on its vision are universal to any venture.

Key Elements:

• The origin story

• The customer story

• The industry story

• The venture growth story

The Origin Story

After eighteen years in a loving, conservative family, Scott Harrison decided it was time to rebel. Like a kid in a bad teen movie, he moved to New York, joined a band, and started drinking. The band broke up immediately, but he discovered you could make a lot more money booking shows than playing them. If you got good, companies would pay you to be seen drinking their booze at a party. That began Scott’s life as a nightclub promoter. Every night, he would convince people to buy $20 bottles of champagne for $200. Budweiser paid him $2,000 a month to drink its beer; Bacardi paid him another $2,000 to drink its rum.

Ten years later on a New Year’s trip to Uruguay, he realized he was the worst person he knew. Surrounded by beautiful people and Dom Pérignon magnums, he said to himself, “I’m never going to find what I’m looking for where I’m looking for it.” Hung over the next day, he started reading the Bible. He came across this verse: “True religion is to look after widows and orphans in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted.” Not the most encouraging verse for a guy who got people wasted for a living.

He knew he had to do something big. Making a deal with God, he decided to spend a year serving the poor to make up for the ten he’d wasted. Eventually, an organization agreed to take him on as a volunteer photographer if he paid them $500 a month. “Here’s my credit card,” he said. “Where are we going?”

Liberia. Doctors from the organization Mercy Ships traveled from country to country, giving operations to help people with facial deformities. Overwhelmed by the poverty and sickness surrounding him, Scott broke down. He photographed thousands of people—people with tumors on their lips so large that they were suffocating or whose communities shunned them and threw rocks at them—all of which were healed by simple surgeries. The first year went by. Scott signed up for another. In the second year, he discovered one of the things that made people sick: dirty water. Standing in front of a beautiful still pond on the outside of a village, he watched as a young girl dipped her bucket into the green water and pulled it out to drink. “No wonder there are things growing on people faces; look at what they’re drinking,” he thought.

He moved back to New York City, unable to get that image of the girl drinking from a swamp out of his mind. Eight hundred million people just like her lacked access to clean water every day. So, at the age of thirty and $30,000 in debt, he moved onto a friend’s couch and started charity: water with the goal of ending the water crisis in his lifetime.

Seven years later, every time Scott speaks about charity: water, he opens with that story.

Your Origin Story

The journey from loving home to the nightclubs of New York to the poorest parts of the world is Scott’s origin story—his personal “why.” It’s how he came to discover his mission and start pursuing it, and it is at the core of his ability to rally people to his cause.

If you want to get people fired up about an idea, they need to know why you are fired up about that idea. Scott knows that sharing the story of how he started keeps people from seeing charity: water as just another charity and creates a bond between him and his audience. “Many people want to know what is driving the entrepreneur forward, and learn more about his or her character before they invest,” Scott said. “I think one of the most important things is being able to tell your personal story in a way that engages people.”

What has brought you to this moment? Why were you “made for a time such as this”? What has prepared you to take on this challenge? Why is it so important to you personally? Why would you do what you’re doing for free? Like Scott, many of the best and most successful entrepreneurs have found a beautiful match between their personal passions and the companies they launch. They talk about their journey in a way that feels as if their ventures are the fulfillment of their life stories. The beautiful part is that it is true.

A founder’s origin story follows the classic pattern known as the hero’s journey, originally described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It starts with the hero living life as usual, unaware of any great need or problem. Then, one day, he’s faced with a deep and troubling experience that keeps him from ever living “life as usual” again. That experience leads to a new sense of purpose, causes him to take great and sometimes risky action, and ultimately changes the way he sees the world. All great hero stories follow this storyline—including those about entrepreneurs.

Diagram of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey

Gray circle = inner journey

Blue circle = outer journey (character transformation)

The Elements of an Origin Story

1. You’re living life as normal, unaware of anything wrong with the world.

2. Suddenly, you have an epiphany and feel a call to adventure.

3. You accept the challenge and take bold action.

4. That action gives you a new sense of purpose and understanding that continues to motivate you today.

The Customer Story

Scott also tells another type of story whenever he speaks: the story about the people charity: water helps. He talks about a woman who walks eight hours a day for water, carrying a clay pot that weighs ten or fifteen pounds empty, and another thirty pounds when it is full. One day, she comes back into the village with her clay pot filled with water, and she slips and falls. The clay pot breaks. She takes the rope she used to wrap the pot around her back and uses it to hang herself on a tree in the middle of the village.

Or, he tells the story of a woman named Helen Appio. Helen grew up in a village in northern Uganda. Before her village had clean water, Helen woke up before dawn to walk nearly a mile and a half to the closest water point. There, she would wait for hours with hundreds of other women to fill her two five-gallon jerry cans. When she walked back to the village, she was forced to make a decision: How do I use these ten gallons of water today? Cook a meal with it? Drink it? Clean the children’s clothes? Then, charity: water built a well in her village. Now that she has water, everything is different. “I’m happy now,” she says. “I have time to eat, my children can go to school, and I can even work in my garden, take a shower, and come back for more water if I want. I’m bathing so well.”

Seeing her bright face and beautiful green dress, a woman from charity: water told her, “Well, you look great.” Helen put her hands on the woman’s shoulders. “Yes,” she said. “Now, I am beautiful.” Recounting that story, Scott marvels, “What an amazing thing. What a crazy thing! To be able to restore someone’s dignity and make them feel beautiful, just by tripling the quantity of water.”

A venture’s success rests on its ability to make the lives of the people it serves better. By telling the story of a person your venture serves, you demonstrate how it solves a deep need in the world. By articulating your value proposition as it relates to a single, real-life person, founders can help the people they are trying to persuade understand the true potential of what they are working on.

These stories follow a very predictable pattern, as well. First, they introduce someone with a big and frustrating problem. They describe what life looks like for that person, how she tries to overcome or solve her problem now, and how nothing she tries works. Then they describe how, one day, that person came in contact with your product, which, almost miraculously, solved the problem she has been struggling with for so long. The stories end by describing what life is like for that person now that she has your product. She is happy. She can’t help but tell others about it. She is free to do so many other things that before she only dreamed of.

These stories communicate the value of a venture in microcosm and give others an anchor to focus their attention.

The Elements of a Customer Story^*

1. Meet Joe. Joe has a problem. This problem really bothers Joe.

2. Joe tried this and this, but no matter what he does he can’t solve his problem.

3. Until, one day, Joe finds [your amazing product].

4. Now Joe is so happy, he tells all his friends. Don’t you want to be like Joe?

The Industry Story

Scott tells another story about the charitable industry itself. He talks about how, after coming back from Africa, he discovered his friends were disillusioned and suspicious of charities. With the image of charity directors buying BMWs and multimillion-dollar mansions with other people’s donations stuck in their heads, no one was interested in giving. “How much money would actually reach the people? How will I know where my money is going?” they asked.

Scott realized that the charity industry was ripe for innovation. People didn’t give because they thought too much money went to the operations of the charity itself. So, Scott opened two bank accounts when he launched charity: water: one for all the overhead of the business, which he would fund with money from private donors, and another for the work of the charity. This way, 100 percent of the funds he raised publicly would go directly to the people he served.

Another reason people didn’t give was because they didn’t feel connected to the impact their money was having. With most organizations, it felt like any money you gave went into a black hole. You never knew where it went or what kind of effect it had. Scott decided charity: water would make a commitment to never fund a project unless it could know it exists through photos and GPS coordinates. Whenever someone gave to charity: water, he or she would be able to go to a Google map and literally see the well that was built with his or her money.

Finally, he realized that charities were often phenomenal at the service they gave but horrible at raising money. The damning words of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof motivated him: “Toothpaste is peddled with far more sophistication than all of the world’s life-saving causes.” There were no effective charity brands. They had horrible websites, hosted speaking events that nobody came to, and were constantly limited by a lack of funds. To be successful, Scott decided, charity: water would create an amazing brand that people wanted to identify themselves with.

This is Scott’s industry story: how, at a macrolevel, the trends and environment of the charitable industry created a unique opportunity for charity: water to do something amazing. In the pursuit of ending the water crisis, it would also reinvent charity.

Telling the industry story gives your audience the confidence that the larger forces at play around you are moving in your favor. The story also shows that you have a deep understanding of how your venture fits into the larger social, political, and economic picture. Can you identify the trends and signs of the space you are in? Who does well in good times? Who does well in bad times? What are the barriers to entry in your industry? What effects do customers, suppliers, substitute solutions, rivals, and the threat of new entrants have on you and other companies in the space?

Industry stories usually follow this kind of pattern: They start by describing where the industry is now and how it got there. They identify the key players in that industry, and the assumptions they make and problems they are facing. Then, they introduce a few key cultural, technological, or economic trends that present an opportunity for someone to do something different. These stories are proof that the wind is at your back and not in your face.

The Elements of an Industry Story

1. For a long time, the industry has operated according to a set of assumptions based on the environment it grew up within.

2. As a result of specific social, technological, or economic factors, those assumptions are no longer holding true, creating problems for the big players in the industry.

3. This change creates a unique opportunity for someone to step in and take advantage of these new circumstances.

The Venture Growth Story

The fourth story Scott tells is charity: water’s growth story. This story illustrates how the other stories—his personal discovery of his mission, the transformation of the people he serves, and the emergence of an opportunity caused by broader societal forces—have come together to enable charity: water’s amazing growth and impact.

Scott launched charity: water by doing the only thing he knew how to do: throw a party. Luring them with free booze, he convinced seven hundred people to pay $20 a ticket for his thirty-first birthday party as a fundraiser for the charity. Then, he took the $15,000 they made and brought it immediately to a refugee camp in northern Uganda. They fixed three wells and sent the photos and the GPS coordinates back to the people who had given. The donors couldn’t believe it; they had never heard of a charity following up on such a small donation. Some had forgotten they had even given.

The next year, he told people to stay home for his birthday and donate $32 instead. That year, he raised $59,000. Soon, others followed suit. A seven-year-old in Austin, Texas, raised $22,000. Justin Bieber raised $47,000. Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey raised $174,000. Charity: water experimented—using any medium it could to get people to care and take action. With each experiment, it took what worked and found a way to expand it. By 2013, charity: water had brought clean water to 3.3 million people in twenty different countries. Yet, as impressive as that progress is, the need is still far greater. Scott has set a goal that by 2020, charity: water will have given 100 million people access to clean water. To get there, it is going to need help.

Charity: water’s growth story contains four basic elements. Scott starts by describing the actions and experiments charity: water took to achieve its mission. Then, he tells how it followed up with those experiments by closing the loop with donors and taking what it learned and applying it to more experiments. Then, he shows how that learning has resulted in astounding results and progress. Finally, Scott shows how despite all that progress, charity: water still has a long way to go, and he invites people into the adventure to help achieve the vision.

Once you discovered your idea, what did you do about it? What happened after that? What needs to happen in the future? For founders, the venture story is the hub around which every other story turns. If the team members cannot translate their passion, understanding, and potential into a venture that produces measurable results, they are wasting their time.

The Elements of a Venture Growth Story

1. We took action.

2. We got results. We learned from those results and took more action.

3. This resulted in unbelievable progress.

4. For as much progress that’s already been made, the vision for what we can do is bigger.

How to Tell a Great Story

A story has been the preferred medium of world changers since the beginning of history. Plato told stories. Jesus told stories. Abraham Lincoln told stories. Steve Jobs told stories. The difference between a great idea you’ve never heard of and one that’s changed the world is its originator’s ability to tell a damn good story. And, yet, stories are extremely simple.

This thing happened. Then, this other thing happened, which caused this other thing to happen, until finally something else happened as a result of all those things that had already happened. The end. So what makes stories so effective?

Stories aren’t powerful because they are fancy; they are powerful because they are like life. They can’t be boiled down to bullet points; they must be lived in and through time. With tools like MRI scans, we know now that by focusing on the details in a story—the world as we know it through our five senses—a storyteller can literally create the event he or she describes inside the mind of the listener. When we describe the sweat dripping from an athlete’s brow as he jogs beneath an August sun, parts of our brains light up as if we were actually out on the pavement with him.

As you incorporate stories into your pitch, you can increase their impact by paying attention to these characteristics of great stories.

What Makes a Great Story?

Things happen. For a story to be a story, things have to happen. Usually, one big thing happens and everything else in the story is in response to or a result of that one big thing. For the story of your pitch to be engaging, you’ll have to choose the biggest and important events in your venture and describe those in a way in which each event builds on the other.

Your five senses give you access to vivid details. If you want to tell a story, you have to start where human knowledge begins: with the senses. As highly educated adults, we like to speak in abstractions, focusing on the ideas, concepts, and complex emotions that are the result of thousands of years of philosophy. We forget that no one has ever seen the wind blow. We see leaves turn, or feel a cool, intermittent pressure against our skin, or hear whistling all around us. It’s those sensory details that lead us to conclude that the wind is blowing.

To get your audience’s attention, you must literally put them into the scene, letting them see what you see, feel what you feel, and hear what you hear. The more vivid the details in your story, the more likely they will stick in the mind of your audience.

Conflict. Life is about struggle, and stories should be, too. If there is no conflict in your story, the audience won’t have anyone to root for. The point of a story is to get people to care. Nothing gets people to care like seeing someone they like face hardship.

Nancy Duarte’s Sparkline

In her book Resonate, Nancy Duarte highlights another key characteristic about stories that is especially relevant for presentations: they contrast what is with what could be. The contour of a presentation as the speaker moves back and forth between what is and what could be is called a “sparkline,” kind of like the heartbeat of the presentation. We use this technique throughout this book. Take the section on “Getting Clarity on Your Idea” in chapter 1:

Too often, people passionate about ideas have articulated them across scraps of paper, e-mails, and thoughts in their head. [what is] This constellation of notes looks a lot like the way the idea looks in your brain: thousands of neurons firing thoughts, making connections through synapses in a web of what were once disconnected memories and inputs. But if you want someone else to understand that mess of a web, you’ve got to find a way to get it into something more accessible. [what could be]

The sparkline happens at a more metalevel, too. The first half of the introduction was all about “what is” (fundraising is hard, experts give bad advice), but then the very first thing we do in chapter 1 is hit you with one big “what could be” (sharing everything that is world changing about your venture with others through a pitch deck). Great stories have a unique rhythm that carries the listener from the beginning and middle to the end, through a constant tension between what is and what could be.

Using Story to Craft the Arc of Your Pitch

You’ll need to choose how to arrange the stories and the slides in your pitch. By leading with the stories and aspects of your venture that are the strongest, you can align your stories in a way that creates an interesting arc and captures the audience’s attention.

Here are a few examples of how stories might fit into your pitch.

Origin story for:

• Products or services with high social benefit

• Effect: Taps into the audience’s desire for meaning.

Customer story for:

• Complex products or services

• Customers with dramatic transformation stories

• Effect: Explains your venture and its value.

Industry story for:

• Disruptive products or services

• Effect: Shows you know what you’re talking about and that the idea could be huge.

Venture story for:

• Ventures with immediate traction

• Effect: Feels like you’re on a train that’s headed somewhere big.

*Adapted from Lee LeFever, The Art of Explanation (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013).